Trump Outsmarts the Press

Sometimes you really have to hand it to Donald Trump. The press has been after him recently about whether he believes the Hillary Clinton campaign’s claim that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. For years, the press has obsessed on “birtherism,” considering it to be a major issue on a par, at least, with a lousy economy and pitiful defense policy. Last night the Trump campaign released a statement to the effect that “Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States.”

I am now going to the brand new Trump International, Hotel D.C. for a major statement.

Reporters assumed the statement would be about Obama’s birthplace, and, sensing an opportunity to halt Hilary’s decline in the polls, hurried to the Trump International en masse, with camera crews in tow. The cable news networks cleared time to broadcast the anticipated Trump humiliation live.

What’s funny about this is that reporters were done in by their own partisan obsession with “birtherism,” the now-discredited suspicion that Obama was telling the truth when he claimed for many years to have been born in Kenya. Trump’s tweet said not a word about it, but reporters let wishful thinking get the better of them.

To be fair, it isn’t difficult to outsmart most reporters. But it is still fun to see it done in such epic fashion.